It would be funny were it not so sad and destructive. Our modernist masters, led by Arch-Scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson, have been beating their epistemological chests praising their empirical wisdom as the sole arbiter of truth, while mocking the notion that the Bible can tell us truth. They delight to pull out every miracle that stretches our credulity, every law that goes against the modern zeitgeist all to show how hopelessly out of it the Bible actually is. Their Bible, scientific consensus, on the other hand is the true light of the world. It is not only a better arbiter of truth but comes equipped with a mindset that drives away prejudice. It’s effective, dispassionate, objective, everything our pathetic Bible is not.
And 50 years ago these modern seers, mining deep into their data, were able to jump the gap between telling us what has happened to tell us what would happen. Here, according to John Gabriel’s fine article here is what they predicted on or around Earth Day, 1970:
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — Harvard biologist George Wald
“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” — Paul Ehrlich
I’m pretty sure the most dramatic Blood Moon/Doomsday/Fundamentalist Christian has never quite gotten his prophecy dander up quite like that. We Bible thumpers are positive pikers when it comes to portentious predictions. Why then does the world give ear to its prophets? Well it’s certainly not their track record. I didn’t even include in my list all the dire warnings in 1970 about global cooling. I think the answer has something to do with the wisdom of PT Barnum whose careful, empirical observations led him to suggest, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
The truth of the matter is that we are an incurably religious people. Our bard was dead-on when he told us, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.” It may be the devil. It may be the Lord. Or it may be the Lords of Academe. We not only have to serve somebody, we have to believe somebody. When we turn from desert dwelling prophets in camel hair to prophets in lab coats we haven’t left faith, we’ve just left the faith. The humor and the irony is found in the insistence of their faithful that they are following Science instead of faith.
The prophets of Global Warming, climate change, climate emergency, the priests of the god of technology ought not frighten us any more than the prophets of Baal or the servants of Asherah. Their religion is not only just as false, but their end just as ignoble- the ash heap of history. Our God reigns, and the future is in His scarred hands. He is the end of the world.